Population-based cancer prevention education intervention through mHealth: a randomized controlled trial
File(s)
Published version
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Despite the high potential of mHealth-related educational interventions to reach large segments of the population, implementation and adoption of such interventions may be challenging. The objective of this study was to gather knowledge on the feasibility of a future cancer prevention education intervention based on the European Code Against Cancer (ECAC), using a population-based mHealth implementation strategy. A type-2 hybrid effectiveness-implementation study was conducted in a sample of the Spanish general population to assess adoption, fidelity, appropriateness, and acceptability of an intervention to disseminate cancer prevention messages, and willingness to consult further digital information. Participation rates, sociodemographic data, mHealth use patterns and implementation outcomes were calculated. Receiving cancer prevention messages through mHealth is acceptable, appropriate (frequency, timing, understandability and perceived usefulness) and feasible. mHealth users reported high access to the Internet through different devices, high ability and confidence to browse a website, and high willingness to receive cancer prevention messages in the phone, despite low participation rates in comparison to the initial positive response rates. Although adoption of the intervention was high, post-intervention fidelity was seriously hampered by the disruptions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, which may have affected recall bias. In the context of the Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan to increase knowledge about cancer prevention across the European Union, this study contributes to inform the design of future interventions using mHealth at large scale, to ensure a broad coverage and adoption of cancer prevention messages as those promoted by the ECAC.
Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov from the U.S. National Library of Medicine, NCT05992792. Registered 15 August 2023 - Retrospectively registered https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT05992792?cond=Cancer&term=NCT05992792&rank=1.
Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov from the U.S. National Library of Medicine, NCT05992792. Registered 15 August 2023 - Retrospectively registered https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT05992792?cond=Cancer&term=NCT05992792&rank=1.
Date Issued
2024-01-09
Date Acceptance
2023-12-02
Citation
Journal of Medical Systems, 2024, 48
ISSN
0148-5598
Publisher
Springer
Journal / Book Title
Journal of Medical Systems
Volume
48
Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2024 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
License URL
Identifier
10.1007/s10916-023-02026-y
Subjects
Cancer prevention
Cancer screening
Digital health
EUROPEAN CODE
European Code Against Cancer
Health Care Sciences & Services
Implementation research
Life Sciences & Biomedicine
Medical Informatics
mHealth
Mobile phone
Primary prevention
Science & Technology
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
9
Date Publish Online
2024-01-09